Decide how you'll promote the affiliate products. As mentioned, the easiest way is through a website or blog. Other successful affiliate marketers set up a squeeze page designed to build an email list, and then promote affiliate products to subscribers. Of course, your list should provide other non-sales information as people don't want to be sold all the time. Some affiliate marketers don't use a website at all, and instead use social media such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Many affiliate marketers use a combination of several marketing tactics.

ClickBank is filled with beginner-friendly features. Because of their different types of product, the sale potential of ClickBank is high. Everybody wants more information online; that’s the nature of the Internet. Therefore, it’s easy to monetize off the program. Additionally, to get started working with ClickBank, you don’t need to have a website. ClickBank provides a lot of information on how to get started and set up. It’s a big perk of working with them. ClickBank basically walks you through the whole process. Learning about affiliate marketing is easy when your program is holding your hand.
If instant gratification is your thing, affiliate marketing will make you want to run into a wall. Even after you surpass the threshold needed to “cash out”, there’s usually a waiting period before your commission is confirmed/approved, simply because they allow time for people to return goods if needed. So yes, affiliate marketing is by no means a fast track to cash.
Robert Glazer, a leader in the affiliate marketing industry for over a decade, draws upon his experience and insights gathered from influential marketers to examine a rapidly changing field. Performance Partnerships is the first in-depth look at the performance (affiliate) marketing industry. Examining its roots and evolution, this book offers a better understanding of its impact as a vital form of direct-to-consumer digital marketing, and advice on how it can be used to change marketing and business development practices.

You should also make sure you aren't competing with your own affiliates for eyeballs. Any marketing channels you're using, such as search engines, content sites or e-mail lists, should be off limits to your affiliates. Put marketing restrictions into your affiliate agreement and notify partners immediately. It's your program--you set the rules. Or, if you prefer, you can let your affiliates run the majority of your internet marketing.

Keeping tabs on what worked and what didn’t will help you decide not only how to strategize in the future, but which brands or vendors to continue doing business with. In the same way freelancers keep books and records of which publishers or editors they enjoyed working with, affiliates have the independence to reroute later on if they don’t end up enjoying certain brands or products.
If you find that the psychology of crowds, social movements and how trends get started is interesting to you, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point has several big interesting insights into how these things happen and the anatomy of social trends. A couple key points is that there are always ‘early adopters’ that spread the fire to a broader range of influencers who spread ideas and trends to the general public; ‘stickiness factors‘ such as association and aesthetics help things gain traction; and that context is key if something is going to catch on – it has to come at the right time and place. Great article as it gets me thinking about the various ways to monetize my sites. With that said, my biggest hurdle has been how to get started building traffic. You see articles all over the net talking about massive traffic techniques, but I’ve never really found a guide for a fresh blog/website and how to get to their first 100, 500, or 1,000 daily uniques. Of course writing consistent quality content is key, but writing alone an audience does not make. Any tips or articles to point us to? Thanks again Sean!
While any “regular” job requires you to be at work to make money, affiliate marketing offers you the ability to make money while you sleep. By investing an initial amount of time into a campaign, you will see continuous returns on that time as consumers purchase the product over the following days and weeks. You receive money for your work long after you’ve finished it. Even when you’re not in front of your computer, your marketing skills will be earning you a steady flow of income.

@ Melissa. Regarding being dropped by Pepperjam in the state of IL…yes I was dropped by all of the merchants that I was using. I still have a Pepperjam account but took down all my links because I received notification from each merchant saying I was dropped. Maybe there are some merchants within the network that allow it??? I don’t have time to figure out which ones out of thousands will accept my link.

If you worry that your readers won’t like the fact that you’re making money, I encourage you to shift your paradigm on this a bit. If someone provided valuable information to you, wouldn’t it be nice to reward them a bit? Maybe they taught you something. Maybe they saved you time for not having to search for the information themselves. Maybe they showed you some great uses for a product you were considering buying anyway. Whatever the case, if you’re providing affiliate links in an ethical way, no one should fault you for it. Let no one tell you that email marketing is dead. An email list is crucial for every affiliate marketer. You can start building up your email list with a lead magnet (like the information products mentioned previously) or even just by encouraging your audience to sign up for your updates. You can then push your content to this audience via email and also direct them to your affiliate offers. Don't be sleazy about the sales, but if you build up enough trust with your email audience; when the time comes, they will not mind purchasing a product from you. Review : I found the course comprehensive and I learned a lot. I wish I found this course when I still owned my Brick and Mortar store, it would have made a big difference in increasing my traffic. I had people coming into my store years after I was open telling me they had no idea my store existed. I used social media but now I see I wasn’t utilizing the platforms to their true potential and that they were not fully optimized at all. I look forward to using what I learned in this course on my next adventure. Makes me excited to get going. Thanks Diego. – Shawn Vesper Hi Melissa, I am really enjoying your Blog, and would like to get into Affiliate Marketing. The problem is I just can’t seem to get them on my Blog. I seem to be the only one to have this problem. I’ve searched for an answer, with no success. I must be the only one out there that can not figure this out. Could you possibly help? Please tell me how this is done. Thank so much, Donna
Push your own content — As an affiliate marketer, you have already proven yourself as a self-starter. You don’t necessarily need the guidance of a micromanager breathing down your neck to ensure you’re doing things correctly. You probably enjoy working alone and proving to others that you can figure out new tasks. That’s great, because you’re going to need this type of attitude to promote your own content.
Take advantage of marketing tools whenever possible. Many affiliate programs offer useful resources to their affiliates aimed at helping affiliates make more sales. These range from monthly newsletters highlighting upcoming sales, tips or affiliate case studies, Facebook Groups just for affiliates, private webinars explaining marketing strategies in depth and more. Ultimate Bundles does this exceptionally well. On Shopify, you can earn up to $2,000 per customer and the highest commissions on referrals. Simply sign up to this affiliate program and receive a special link to share on your blog or social media posts. For every customer that signs up to Shopify through your links, you’ll earn an income. Each time you refer someone to Shopify, you can earn 200 percent of a customer’s subscription fee.
The good news is, you don’t have to be an expert on dog food to put together a quality affiliate marketing business model and you certainly don’t have to partner with a large corporation like Amazon. Heck, I could partner with a locally owned holistic dog food store and help them increase their profits by several hundred percent by shipping products nationwide. It’s up to you! There’s a good reason why ClickBank is still a strong contender, however it does tend to focus more on digital products which may be of questionable quality. Yes, the review process is more professional these days, but it’s still primarily focused on selling digital products, especially “how to make money” courses and the like. That being said, there are some genuinely high-quality products on offer, and few affiliate programs are bigger than ClickBank, especially in selling (primarily digital) books.
Before we actually register your domain name, you have to find a domain name you like and one that is actually available. This really is a trial and error process along with your own creative juices. Check out the tool below to search for available domain names, but don’t register it yet! Just search for and find an available domain name you like, and we’ll get it registered shortly.